Campus News |
ART CENTER NEWSWIRE - May 1, 2000
PASADENA, CA, USA | To keep abreast of the exciting and innovative ideas, people and projects at Art Center College of Design, the media and general public can subscribe to Art Center's news digest by sending a blank email to: newswire-on@lists.artcenter.edu. We highlight some of the newsmakers in our Art Center community on the first and third Monday every month. To report news or obtain more information, contact Jan Kingaard, tel. 626-396-2394, fax 626-683-9233.
GREAT MINDS
150th Graduation
The first graduating class of the 21st century was addressed by special guest, Massimo Vignelli who was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Art Center. Massimo has been practicing in New York since the 1960s and has shaped the world of communications and how we think about design for decades. His extraordinary body of work includes graphic and corporate identity programs, publication designs, architectural graphics, and exhibition, interior, furniture, and consumer product designs for many leading American and European companies and institutions. Here are a few pieces of wisdom he passed along to the next generation: Commencement day marks the beginning of your responsibility towards yourself, your client and society at large. Keep open; over specialization brings entropy and entropy brings creative death. What does it take to be the best designer? Be appropriate, because if you're not appropriate, you miss the target. Be meaningful or you're meaningless. You need to be clear because if you're foggy no one can see what you've done. Once you have your content clear and organized, good design will follow. Design things that will last a long time; obsolescence represents a mentality that is gone. Be intelligent rather than clever. Be imaginative, surprising, never boring. Be witty, not funny. Be elegant, not extravagant. Project strength. Remove the unnecessary; aim for the essence of things, rather than the appearance. Don't be seduced by technology and other distractions. Eliminate redundancy. Be timely: You can never make money if your work is ahead of its time or comes too late, after others have done it. Try to be responsible and relevant. Be innovative or at least make things a little better than has ever done before. Be rigorous and never arbitrary. Be intelligent rather than clever. Refine rather than change for the sake of change. Try to be yourself. But if you want the world to understand that you are a designer, dress in black.ADVERTISING/ILLUSTRATION
Art-Talk
Born and raised in Southern California, Ray Roberts' earliest recollections are of California Impressionism. He attended Art Center and has studied under John Asaro, Len Chmiel and Mark Daily. The plein air artist lives in the Golden State and paints the Southwest. His loose, textured paintings have a definite point of view which he says is the result of trusting the process of painting that he has learned. Medicine Man Gallery in Arizona will show his paintings through May.ART CENTER
Los Angeles Times
Richard Koshalek always has a public mission. And that hasn't changed since he became president of Art Center seven months ago. "I'm unbelievably optimistic about the future of schools like Art Center and the work that creative people will do," he said. "They will no longer be isolated in universities and museums; they will be front and center, as critical problem solvers. The explosion of digital communication has created a democratic exchange of information in design as well as other fields, he said, so it is imperative for Art Center to have a global presence. Three college representatives are on fact-finding missions in Europe and will travel to Asia in May, with a goal of exchanging ideas and setting up partnerships with educational institutions and other organizations all over the world.
Los Angeles TimesThe Southern California Institute of Architecture will move its campus to downtown Los Angeles in a major boost for civic efforts to revive the central city with new cultural and educational institutions. "The business interests downtown are now speaking with one voice and saying, "Let's encourage education,'" said developer Tom Gilmore, who is building loft housing in the historic core. The city would like Art Center to move its campus to Bunker Hill near the new Disney Concert Hall.
Los Angeles TimesCreative Artists Agency, which is starting a program to support art students in Los Angeles, has 200 new works by 92 local artists hanging in its halls. Predominantly young, hip and little-known, but backed up by prominent veterans, the newly collected CAA artists are based in L.A. and connected with local art schoolseither as past or present students, or as teachers. Illustration alumnus Salomon Huerta was tapped for this year's Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American in New York and is in the CAA collection. The talent agency's emphasis on art and education is underlined by a new CAA Foundation-sponsored program, scheduled to begin in the fall. The program will fund scholarships for graduates of the Los Angeles Unified School District who wish to study art at Art Center and other California institutions.
DIGITAL DESIGN
Shift
Art Center was named one of the top 10 new-media schools, noting "Although it was founded by an ad man in 1930, the school is infused with the modernist dictum that design has a social purpose. Hard-core design-driven, but respectful of the bigger picture. Bonus: a one-to-nine ratio of faculty to students. Double bonus: hands-down winner for the funkiest print catalog. Faculty have won Emmys, as well as Getty and NEA grants. Staff member Ana Wolovick is the technical director for South Park. Acceptance into the MA program in Communication & New-Media design requires a highly focused, well-developed portfolio. Work experience and exposure to professional design is a definite asset. A previous degree and sizable chunk of talent are both required.ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
HOW
Jennifer Myers says she values the communicative power of graphics but believes that architectural forms can also speak for themselves. "The intent, the concept, should be the key," says Myers. "You need to keep yourself in check and not make some architectural move that doesn't have a reason, that doesn't go back to the core of the idea.. After graduating in a fine-arts-based graphics program from Marshall University in West Virginia young designer became art director at Connie Post Designs and gradually expanded her involvement from graphics to include interior design. A scholarship enabled her to earn a degree in Environmental Design from Art Center. She produced a coffee table made of milled aluminum and veneered wood with several storage shelves which won her a trip to Paris last year where she participated in a professional furniture show. She also placed third in the American Institute of Architects/Landscape Architects Architecture Competition Charette.
Washington PostThe era of interactive design has arrived at the Milan international furniture fair. Known this year as iSaloni 2000, the 39th official trade show opened at the city's sprawling fairground. Nearly 1,650 furniture companies and 500 lighting firms displayed their products. For Americans, the mass-market pursuit of "good" design is a recent phenomenon propelled by price-conscious retailers from Kmart, Target and Ikea to Pottery Barn. But for design-savvy Europeans, Milan has been a magnet for four decades. Each April, architects, interior designers, photographers, stylists, set designers, graphic artists and museum curators gather here to spot the Next New Things. For three years, fair organizers even have opened the door wide to design schools where a new generation of talent is emerging. American contingents this year traveled from Art Center as well as RISD.
FILM
Shoot
Art Center grad Steve Tsuchida was profiled in a special report on the new flock of promising up-and-coming commercial directors. After spending a year as an art director at Tierney & Partners, Philadelphia, Tsuchida enrolled at Art Center "because I wanted to become a more complete filmmaker." He didn't waste any time getting his spec reel out to production companies upon graduating and directed spec pieces for the World Wrestling Federation and Virgin Megastore. He is now directing TV commercials with Oil Factory, Hollywood.ILLUSTRATION
Newsweek
As a whole new generation comes into view, alumnus Salomon Huerta was among six savvy young artists standing out from the crowd. Born in 1965 in Tijuana, Mexico, raised in the L.A. projects, Huerta kept his nose to his drawing board. He made it to a community college, then to Art Center. "I'd have to go through a parking lot with drug dealers to get to my car to drive to Art Center," he recalled. But the last thing he wants is for viewers at the Whitney Biennial to see his crisply colorful small paintings of houses as souvenirs of the barrio. Huerta looks for generic homes, alters them, taking away a window or adding a garage, and renders the homes in a perfumery palette he gets from music videos and fashion magazines. His work is suffused with the hope of working-class people who manage to hang tough, too.
Art-TalkDrawing the West, a show of new works by Joe Milazzo is on display through June 17 at Judith Hale Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Milazzo was born and raised in California, and the ranching life he loves to draw comes directly from his own experience. After attending Art Center, Milazzo experimented with a variety of media before settling on pencil, the simplest and in some ways most challenging of all. He also works in pen and ink, an unforgiving but dramatic medium. He uses these tools to bring the modern cowboy and the beauty of this life to realization.
PRODUCT
Vogue
Celebrities can't live without Nokia's 8860, the world's chicest cell phone, designed by Frank Nuovo, Art Center alumnus. Throughout his wanderings around the globe these days, on flights from Los Angeles, where he is based, to Scandinavia, where the company he designs for makes its corporate home, Nuovo sees people everywhere using his long-labored-over handiwork. Nuovo's newest phone is the big hit in the world of wireless communication, the hottest cell phone on the charts. It is the sleek, stream-lined, and aerodynamic phone that's a little Le Corbusier, a little Matrix -the first fashion phone. "The relationship between the individual and the device, between man and machine, is sort of a fascination," Frank said. It's the perfect neo-eighties status thing, the logo-as-object that is a-almost as a bonus-crackling with the sound of your best friend.TRANSPORTATION
Pasadena Star-News
Editor Larry Wilson's editorial noted that J Mays is the youngest head designer ever at Ford, which, given the recent takeovers, makes him also the head designer at Volvo, Jaguar, Mazda and Aston Martin. He grew up on his grandfather's ranch outside of Maysville, Oklahoma, and he lived abroad for 15 years designing at Audi and BMW, prior to designing the new Beetle which is a huge hit in California.
VelocityCover StoryEver wonder where all these cool new cars come from? Well, a good many of them are born at a place that might as well be called Cool U. Not only is it the most prestigious school of its type in the world, its graduates compose fully half of the working automotive designers in the world today. Two such alumni are Doug Halbert and Dave Marek, the chief designer and the manager/principal design, respectively, at Honda R&D North America, Inc., the company's Southern California-based advanced styling studio. Honda regularly returns to the well of creativity that is Art Center and sponsors senior-class projects like those featured in this cover story. Each of the vehicles in this project is striking in appearance and imaginative in detail and execution, but is any likely to be our next Honda? Only time will tell. However, with their drive, vision, and credentials as Art Center graduates, these young designers will have a say in what your next Honda will look likeand it will be very cool indeed.